A substantial part of the population is going to continue to insist on owning highly inbred genetically messed up dog breeds with serious health issues (e.g. bulldogs and pugs). If you do not want to me like them then avoid the unhealthiest dog breeds. But given that these breeds will continue to exist it certainly makes sense to genetically fix the fixable ones (some are, by breed standard, probably not fixable). So genetic engineers who want to fix dogs shouldn't have to deal with the US Food and Drug Administration classifying fixed dogs as drugs. How about a list of genetic variations that the FDA and similar agencies in Europe agree ought to be eliminated and then approval of any dogs that get fixed to no longer have them.

We will find ourselves in a situation in not too many years where there's going to be a regulatory need for preapproved allowable genetic variants for a variety of species, probably including humans. What will be especially interesting about that day: Some already existing genetic variants (or perhaps weighted combination of variants that together cause a trait) will have to be banned. For example, suppose some genetic variants make very homicidal people and that these variants occur naturally. We do not (or at least most of do not want) to see people making babies that are criminally worse than their parents.

But smarter regulation (both in terms of making safe stuff easier to do and banning dangerous stuff) would help I do not think it will avoid some pretty dangerous outcomes. My long term worry is that genetic engineering will become so easy to do that a variety of people around the world will twiddle a large assortment of species for a large assortment of goals, some of which will have calamitous effects. Some people could have religious or ideological motivations to cause mayhem among their enemies. Others will just be random people wanting to make themselves famous by, for example, creating a fish that wipe out all other types of fish in a major river or by making a plant that spells out a political message in its leaves. Lots of imaginations will think about it and once it becomes easy to do some will act on it.

About 35-40 years ago secretary was the biggest job in most states. Those days are long past. As you can see by advancing the time bar for the USA states map on that page, by 2000 truck driver was the biggest job. So I have a question for Bill Gates: Do you want to tax word processors too?

Also, autonomous vehicle technology will surely wipe out most truck driving jobs in the next 20 years. Do you want to tax autonomous truck technology to slow the rate of that transition? Keep in mind that thousands of lives will be saved each year once autonomous trucks slash the accident rate, even tens of thousands of lives if we include autonomous cars.

At first glance taxes on robots work better for services that can not be exported. But wait. Taxes on home care robots aren't going to fly because sick old people are going to say they can't afford the taxes any better than they can afford human home care providers. Ditto for taxes on medical treatments. People want cheap health care. So expect political battles over which local robot services are suitable for taxing.

This advance is timely as photovoltaic electric power prices have dropped so far that in SoCal PV is causing a growing drop in mid-day demand and therefore a much bigger spike in evening demand. Therefore there's a growing need for a cheaper way to store power generated in mid day and deliver it in the evening. You can see how much solar power output surges each day in California by clicking on some of the Daily Renewables Watch links at the Cal ISO site (the organization that manages California's electric grid).